Conventionally, various kinds of methods for manufacturing a foil decorated molding, which is molded by an injection molding process and has a transfer layer removed from a substrate film a transfer foil and placed on the surface of the molding after the transfer foil is inserted into cavities in an injection mold, have been known in the art. Since the use of the method requires an alignment of the transfer foil along a cavity-forming face of the mold, the transfer foil is preheated before the injection molding process so as to be easily aligned along the cavity-forming face of the mold where the cavity-forming face thereof is greatly recessed or projected from a parting face of the mold.
As one example in the art, an injection molding method shown in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 58-132529 is constructed so that a heating means is put into and removed from a space between a first half of a mold and a second half of the mold in mold opening to heat a transfer foil before injection molding.
As another example thereof, an injection molding device for manufacturing a foil decorated molding, which is shown in Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 59-31140, is constructed so that a heating means for heating a transfer foil is installed in a means for transporting a transfer foil. The heating means heats the foil while it is moved into a space between a first half of a mold and second half of the mold in mold opening.
However, there have been problems in that in these devices, the technique for removing a molding from the mold has no special consideration. That is, any of the techniques described above only disclose that the preheated transfer foil is set to the space between the first half of the mold and the second half of the mold in mold opening. After mold clamping, molten resin is injected into cavities in the mold, and the mold is open to remove the molding from the mold after the molding is cooled. In short, the molding removal operation is performed completely separate from the transfer foil heating operation. Therefore, the conventional techniques have problems in that the molding cycle becomes longer for an additional time when the molding removal operation is done separately from the heating operation, resulting in much lower productivity.
Accordingly, an essential object of the present invention is to provide an injection molding device and method for manufacturing a foil decorated molding in which, by use of a short time when a first half of a mold and a second half of the mold are opened relative to each other and a space is between the first half of the mold and the second half of the mold, both the molding removal operation and the transfer foil heating operation can be simultaneously performed to improve the productivity of the operation.